Police Find Recording of Husband’s Deadly Assault on Wife’s Phone

Bradley Jenkins. (Photo Courtesy of SLMPD)

An Illinois man is facing third-degree domestic assault charges after a fight with his wife resulted in her death.

Bradley Jenkins, a prison guard from Taylorville, Illinois, and his wife of just two weeks, 27-year-old Allissa Martin, who is also a prison guard, are said to have been attending a Cardinals’ game at Busch Stadium in St Louis.

The couple are said to have married on May 22 in Las Vegas, and that both of them worked for the Illinois Department of Corrections, Jenkins since 2010 and Martin since 2017.

Police say Jenkins told them the two had been arguing at the game. After the game, the argument allegedly escalated and ended with Martin falling to her death onto the lower level of a multi-story parking garage near the Cardinals’ stadium.

Officers responded to a 911 call around 1:45 a.m. Sunday morning, and upon arrival to the Stadium parking garage, found Martin’s body laying on the ramp with Jenkins straddling her body.

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After the discovery of Martin’s body early Sunday morning, police also recovered her cellphone from the seventh floor of the garage and found the camera was still recording, reported KMOV4.

Legal documents indicate that the recording recovered from the phone shows Allissa pointing the camera toward herself before turning it toward her husband.

An argument then ensued, after which Martin can be heard yelling at her husband to stop punching her in the face. She then dropped the phone and could be heard screaming as she fell to her death.

Police say Jenkins tried claiming the argument never got physical, but the claim was later refuted by the cell phone video.

Jenkins is currently in custody. A cash-only bond has been set at $100,000.

The Gravity of Domestic Violence

Most domestic violence cases go unreported, and one in four women experience some form of violence during their lifetime, according to New-Hope.org

More women get injured due to domestic violence than collective figures for women becoming injured in accidents, rapes, and muggings, according to the organization.

A woman suffers violence every nine seconds in the United States. “Women ages 20 to 24 are at the greatest risk of becoming victims of domestic violence,” states the website.

Domestic Violence Statistics

• On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men.
• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.
• 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered “domestic violence.”
• 1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.
• 1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner. Data is unavailable on male victims.
• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
• 1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed.
• On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hotlines nationwide.
• The presence of a gun in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500%.
• Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime.
• Women between the ages of 18-24 are most commonly abused by an intimate partner.
• 19% of domestic violence involves a weapon.
• Domestic victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior.
• Only 34% of people who are injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries.

(Statistics obtained from NCADV).

Venus Upadhayaya contributed to this report.